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The Guardianreports: “Less than halfway through her elected mandate, Dilma Rousseff was stripped of her presidential duties for up to six months on Thursday after the Senate voted to begin an impeachment trial.

“After a marathon 20-hour debate that one politician described as the ‘saddest day for Brazil’s young democracy,’ senators voted 55 to 22 to suspend the Workers’ party leader, putting economic problems, political paralysis and alleged fiscal irregularities ahead of the 54 million votes that put her in office.

“Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, will have to step aside while she is tried in the upper house for allegedly manipulating government accounts ahead of the previous election. Her judges will be senators, many of whom are accused of more serious wrongdoing.”

The Guardian notes that a new election, favored by many Brazilians as a way of stabilizing the situation “has been ruled out by Vice President Michel Temer, who has now maneuvered to replace his running mate. He has spent the past few weeks canvassing candidates for the center-right administration he is now expected to form. Advance lists of ministerial posts in the domestic media suggest his first cabinet will be entirely male and overwhelmingly white.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Currently in the U.S., Mendonça is director of Brazil’s Network for Social Justice and Human Rights. She is also a professor in the international relations department at the University of Rio De Janeiro.

She said today: “The vote in the Senate was predicable since most of the senators had already expressed their opinions. But this has been a political trial. It’s not about the alleged reason for the impeachment. If the same criteria used against her were used against state governors, 16 of them would be impeached. They all used the same mechanism to cover a budget shortfall. You can’t impeach a president because you don’t like him or her. That’s why we call this a coup.

“Temer is incredibly unpopular — he has two percent support. He’s already naming a new cabinet, which is highly legally questionable. He’s moving a rightwing agenda to cut education and healthcare and abolish the culture ministry.

“He and over half of Congress members in the Lower House and in the Senate are under investigation for corruption and now have much more power over federal police and the legislature to try to prevent those investigations from moving forward.”

Glenn Greenwald notes in “Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed,” that: “Her successor will be Vice President Michel Temer of the PMDB party. So unlike impeachment in most other countries with a presidential system, impeachment here will empower a person from a different party than that of the elected President. In this particular case, the person to be installed is awash in corruption: accused by informants of involvement in an illegal ethanol-purchasing scheme, he was just found guilty of, and fined for, election spending violations and faces an eight-year-ban on running for any office.”

The New York Times reports today: “In a stunning twist in the effort to impeach President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, the new speaker of the lower house of Congress has changed his mind — less than 24 hours after announcing that he would try to annul his chamber’s decision to impeach her.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Currently in the U.S., Mendonça is director of Brazil’s Network for Social Justice and Human Rights. She is also a professor in the international relations department at the University of Rio De Janeiro.

She said today: “The procedures to impeach president Dilma Rousseff in Brazil are looking more like tragic theater every day. Yesterday, the speaker of the lower House, Waldir Maranhao, canceled the decision taken by the plenary on April 17, which approved the impeachment, pointing to several illegal measures in that vote. Late last night, Maranhao canceled his own decision. Earlier yesterday, the speaker in the Senate, Renan Calheiros, ignored Maranhao’s decision to cancel the April 17 vote, and declared that he would move ahead with the Senate vote, which could make the whole impeachment process illegal. Last week, the Supreme Court accepted charges of corruption against former House speaker, Eduardo Cunha, who orchestrated and conducted the impeachment vote on April 17, in which the accusations against the president were rarely mentioned during the vote. Most Congress members declared that they were supporting the impeachment in the name of God, their families, and one of them even praised a former military commander who tortured several political activists during the military dictatorship in Brazil.

“President Dilma Rousseff is accused of using a common financial mechanism to cover social program expenses in the federal budget by borrowing funds from public banks, which previous administrations also used, as well as local administrations. On the other hand, most Congress members in favor of the impeachment face serious investigations of corruption.

“Media outlets in Brazil play a key role in this process, calling demonstrations against the government. A key player is Globo TV, which is known for supporting the military dictatorship that lasted more than 20 years in Brazil. Globo executives were recently mentioned in connection with the Panama Papers, and in the investigations against FIFA for illegal procedures in negotiating broadcast rights of soccer games.

“At the same time, large demonstrations against the impeachment and in defense of the democratic process that elected president Rousseff have been ignored by mainstream media. If the electoral process is undermined in Brazil, major political institutions will lose credibility, including the National Congress and the Judiciary, given the contradictions and irregularities that can put democracy at risk. The vice-president, Michael Temer, who hopes to assume the presidency, will not have legitimacy as his popularity is extremely low and he is currently facing corruption charges.

“The main agenda for impeaching President Rousseff is to stop investigations of corruption against Congress members and media executives, and to implement severe austerity measures and cuts in social programs, which will increase social inequality and economic instability.”

The New York Times reports: “Dilma Rousseff Is Impeached by Brazil’s Lower House of Congress,” which states: “After three days of impassioned debate, the lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, voted to send the case against [President Dilma] Rousseff to the Senate. Its 81 members will vote by a simple majority on whether to hold a trial on charges that the president illegally used money from state-owned banks to conceal a yawning budget deficit in an effort to bolster her re-election prospects. That vote is expected to take place next month.”

MARK WEISBROT, weisbrot at cepr.net
Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and has written extensively about Latin America. He recently wrote the piece “Brazilian Coup Threatens Democracy and National Sovereignty,” which states: “there is no evidence that [Rousseff] is linked to the ‘Lava Jato’ scandal, or any other corruption. Rather, she is accused of an accounting manipulation that somewhat misrepresented the fiscal position of the government — something that prior presidents have done. To borrow an analogy from the United States, when the Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling in the U.S. in 2013, the Obama administration used a number of accounting tricks to postpone the deadline at which the limit was reached. Nobody cared.

“The impeachment campaign — which the government has correctly labelled a coup — is an effort by Brazil’s traditional elite to obtain by other means what they have not been able to win at the ballot box for the past 12 years.”

CECILIA MacDOWELL SANTOS, santos at usfca.edu
Director of the Latin American Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, Santos is among the Latin America scholars to sign the petition “Brazilian Democracy is Seriously Threatened,” which states: “The combat against corruption is legitimate and necessary to improve the responsiveness of Brazilian democracy. But in the current political climate, we find a serious risk that the rhetoric of anti-corruption has been used to destabilize the current democratically-elected government, further aggravating the serious economic and political crisis that the country is facing.

“Instead of retaining political neutrality and respecting due process, sectors of the Judiciary, with the support of major media interests, have become protagonists in undermining the rule of law. … The violation of democratic procedure represents a serious threat to democracy. When the armed forces overthrew the government of President João Goulart in 1964, they used the combat against corruption as one of their justifications.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Mendonça is director of Brazil’s Network for Social Justice and Human Rights. She is also professor in the international relations department at the University of Rio De Janeiro.

She highlights the role of social movements against the impeachment. For example, see the website of the MST, the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, which features “Ten Facts that Brazil and the World Should Know,” which states: “This is precisely why the request for impeachment constitutes a coup d’etat, because a president can only be removed if he or she is found to have committed a crime — and as a crime did not occur, so far, Dilma’s name has not been presented in any corruption investigations: not even the slightest suspicion against her exists.

“Unlike President Dilma, the politicians calling for her dismissal are corrupt and are as dirty as they come. Eduardo Cunha (PMDB-RJ) who, as chairman of the House is responsible for the impeachment process, has received more than 52 million Brazilian Rs. (BR$) from corrupt schemes undertaken in Petrobras, plus he has millions deposited in secret accounts in Switzerland and other tax havens. Of the 65 members of the Parliamentary Commission that will investigate the request for impeachment 37 (more than half!) are under the watchful eye of the Justice Department and are being investigated for corruption. If they manage to depose the president, in exchange they expect to see the charges against them for the fraud they have committed dropped.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA, marialuisam222 at gmail.com
Mendonça is director of Brazil’s Network for Social Justice and Human Rights and professor in the international relations department at the University of Rio De Janeiro.

She has recently arrived in the U.S. from Brazil. Mendonça said today: “The Brazilian people are happy about having the World Cup, but hate FIFA. The way it works is detrimental to the host country in a number of ways. It compels the country to change laws about who has access to the stadiums, with corporate sponsors controlling much of the process. It’s often not regular fans who are able to see the World Cup games in the stadiums, but a tiny elite. It’s been a similar pattern in South Africa and elsewhere.

“People thought there would be infrastructure, like subways, built as a result of the World Cup, but instead, FIFA compels Brazil to build huge stadiums with a capacity of 50,000 in areas where local teams will not be able to draw more than 5,000 people.

“Some of the most interesting things we’ve seen are outside the stadiums, including protests for improving health care, education, transportation. Instead we’re seeing severe state repression, including activists being arrested just before the games.”

JONATHAN KUTTAB, jonathankuttab at gmail.com
MARIABRUNA JENNINGS, mariabruna at gwmail.gwu.edu
Now in the Washington, D.C. area, Kuttab is founder of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and also a co-founder of Nonviolence International, which recently put out a 45-page report “Report: Israel Hinders Football in Occupied Palestine” with the Palestine Football Association. Jennings is author of the report and is a student at George Washington University in international affairs and history. Kuttab edited the report. They were featured on the recent IPA news release “Could FIFA Suspend Israel?“

President Obama is scheduled to be in Trinidad and Tobago today for the Summit of the Americas.

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA
Mendonça, based in São Paulo, Brazil, is director of the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights. She said today: “The expectation of grassroots movements in Latin America is to change the focus of the debate in multilateral spaces. Our governments tend to focus on access to markets and security issues. We want to deal with the root causes of the current economic, environmental, and food crises, by building international solidarity and hemispheric integration based on people-to-people ties.”

GREG GRANDIN
Professor of history at New York University, Grandin is the author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. In a recent article, he wrote: “This week many will be watching to see if Barack Obama, in what will be his first real engagement with Latin America, is ready to reverse course at this summit as Roosevelt did more than three-quarters of a century ago.”

Grandin added: “To the United States, Latin America has not just been a source of raw materials and markets, but a ‘workshop,’ a place where rising foreign-policy coalitions try out new ways to project U.S. power following periods of acute crisis. FDR did it, as did Reagan and the New Right when, in the 1980s, they used Central America to experiment with junking multilateralism, while remilitarizing and remoralizing foreign policy.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020 or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The Washington Post reports on its front page today: “More than 100 million people are being driven deeper into poverty by a ‘silent tsunami’ of sharply rising food prices, which have sparked riots around the world and threaten U.N.-backed feeding programs for 20 million children, the top U.N. food official said Tuesday.”

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA
Maria Luisa Mendonça is based in São Paulo, Brazil, and is director of the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights. She co-wrote an article titled “Agrofuels: Myths and Impacts.” She said today: “In many regions of [Brazil], the increase in ethanol production has caused the expulsion of small farmers from their lands, and has generated a dependency on the so-called ‘sugarcane economy,’ where only precarious jobs exist in the sugarcane fields. Large landowners’ monopoly on land blocks other economic sectors from developing, and generates unemployment, stimulates migration, and submits workers to degrading conditions.

“This model has caused negative impacts on peasant and indigenous communities, who have their territories threatened by the constant expansion of large plantations. The lack of policies in support of food production leads peasants to substitute their crops for agrofuels, and, as a result, compromises our food sovereignty. In Brazil, small- and medium-sized farmers are responsible for 70 percent of the food production for the internal market.

“It is necessary to strengthen rural workers’ organizations to promote sustainable peasant agriculture, prioritizing diversified food production for local consumption. It is crucial to advocate for policies that guarantee subsidies for food production through peasant agriculture. We cannot keep our tanks full while stomachs go empty.”

RACHEL SMOLKER
Research biologist at the Global Justice Ecology Project, Smolker said today: “The massive diversion of crops and land to producing biofuel crops instead of food is a major factor in the very dramatic food price increases. Governments and industries have foolishly pursued biofuels in spite of this and in spite of a cascade of scientific studies and statements from all levels of society which clearly demonstrate that biofuels are not only exacerbating hunger, but also rural displacement, climate change and deforestation. Last week the UK instated its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation for the use of biofuels even as the European Environment Agency warned that the EU-wide mandate should be reconsidered. Even the World Bank recently stated that biofuels are contributing to rising food prices and hunger.

“Incentives and mandates for the use of biofuels are being promoted by agribusiness giants like Monsanto, ADM and Cargill along with big oil, biotechnology and automobile industries — all of whom stand to profit enormously. The price is being paid right now by those who can no longer afford food or access to land. Civil society is pushing back: this week the Round Table on Responsible Soy is meeting in Buenos Aires and will be met with intense opposition as people denounce the entire concept of ‘sustainable industrial agriculture’ of the sort that has despoiled so much of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

“The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development report took a strong position opposing industrial agriculture and GE [genetically engineered] crops while a major new report from University of Kansas makes it clear that GE crops have not delivered on the promise of increased yields. We need new models for food and energy production that do not leave people hungry and displaced, do not contaminate our crop biodiversity and pollute our water and soils, and do not leave food and energy production in the hands of profit-seeking multinational corporations. People are beginning to wake up to this fact.

“Meanwhile, the food crisis is pushing biofuel proponents to argue that the next generation of technologies based on cellulose will avert problems with food competition and deliver greater climate benefits. In fact they could worsen the problems: There is limited space available and we are losing land to desertification and deforestation at an alarming rate. A few weeks ago, [the journal] Science published a pair of articles showing that the greenhouse gas emissions that result from indirect land use changes far outweigh any gains from substituting fossil fuel use. Wood is considered to be one of the most promising feedstocks. But demand for wood is skyrocketing as countries attempting to meet Kyoto commitments are shifting to wood and other biomass for heat and electricity production, as well as chemicals and manufacturing processes.

“On top of that, the pulp and paper industry is undergoing a planned fivefold expansion and China has a very rapidly expanding wood products industry. The scale of demand for wood to satisfy all of these demands can only be met by further deforestation and by enormous industrial monocultures of fast-growing trees. The biotechnology industries are racing to genetically engineer both trees and microorganisms for these uses. Next month at the Convention on Biological Diversity, civil society organizations will be asking for a moratorium on the commercialization of GE trees because of the potential risks of contaminating native forests.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

RACHEL SMOLKER
Research biologist at the Global Justice Ecology Project, Smolker said today: “In just the past week [the U.S. government] permitted field testing of a eucalyptus genetically engineered specifically for biofuel production, a $375 million DOE grant was made to fund three major bioenergy research centers, BP and DuPont fronted most of $400 million for a ‘world class’ biofuel plant in the U.K., and the U.S. Senate passed a bill to mandate a target of 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022. The pace at which biofuels are being promoted is staggering.

“Behind the corporate ‘greenwash’ that biofuels will help solve the problem of global warming is an unfolding environmental and social catastrophe. The idea that we can solve our problems by permitting huge multinational corporations to grab up agricultural lands and cut down forests in order to install massive industrial plantations of fuel feedstocks is ludicrous and extremely dangerous. The direct and indirect impacts on food, soils, water, indigenous people and biodiversity are already evident. Any greenhouse gas emission savings is far outweighed by the emissions caused by deforestation and industrial agriculture. The oil, biotechnology and agribusiness industries see massive profits and are forging alliances to consolidate food and fuel production under one collosal industrial roof.”More Information

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA
Maria Luisa Mendonça is based in São Paulo and is in the U.S. until Saturday at the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. She is director of the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights and co-wrote an article titled “The Myth of Biofuels.” She said today: “Now there is a real concern in the U.S. about global warming and that’s good because the U.S. is responsible for 25 percent of all air pollution, so of course it’s important that the U.S. public take responsibility for that. But no alternative energy source would meet the current demands for oil in this country. Right now there are about 770 cars for each 1,000 people in the U.S., so this is not a sustainable sort of society. So before we talk about alternative sources of energy, we need to talk about massive good-quality public transportation — and then talk about the impacts of the current sources for biofuel and bio-diesel and ethanol.

“In the case of ethanol, the main sources now are sugarcane and corn, and both have several problems in terms of environmental destruction because any type of extensive agricultural process will have an impact in terms of the amount of water you need, the soil pollution with pesticides, and of course the ground water pollution. In the case of sugarcane there is also the problem of burning sugarcane which causes air pollution as well. And in the case of bio-diesel, which is mainly made from palm oil and soybeans, this is causing a great deal of deforestation, destroying the rain forest in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia and Indonesia. So using agricultural land for biofuels is not really sustainable.

“In addition to all environmental issues, we have also serious labor rights violations in the case of cutting sugarcane. …

“Biofuels can actually make global warming worse in the case of Brazil, because in the case of Brazil carbon emissions are not as much because of our lifestyle, like in the United States. Carbon emissions for Brazil are for the most part because of the destruction of the rain forest in Brazil, so putting more pressure on expensive agriculture will only mean more destruction of the rain forest and therefore more emission of carbon and more global warming.”More Information

For more information, contact the Institute for Public Accuracy at (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan at (541) 484-9167.

MARIA LUISA MENDONÇA
Maria Luisa Mendonça is in São Paulo where Bush will be arriving this afternoon; protests are expected.

She is director of the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights and can address a host of issues pertaining to Brazil and Latin America. Most recently, she co-wrote an article in the newspaper Brazil de Fato titled “The Myth of Biofuels,” which states: “The acceleration of global warming is a fact that places in risk life on the planet. It is necessary, however, to demystify the principal solution presented at the moment and … the supposed benefits of biofuels. …”

“The ‘efficiency’ of our production is due to the use of cheap labor — even slave labor. … Besides the destruction of the environment and the use of agricultural lands for the production of biomass, there are other polluting effects in the process, such as the construction of transport infrastructure, warehouses for storage, which demand a great quantity of energy, of in-puts (fertilizers and agro-toxics) and of irrigation to guarantee the increase of production. … The expansion of biofuels production puts at risk food sovereignty and can deeply aggravate the problem of world hunger. In Mexico, for example, the increase of corn exports to sustain the ethanol market in the U.S. caused an increase of 400 percent in the price of the product, which is the population’s main food source.”

Senator EDUARDO SUPLICY
Suplicy is a Brazilian Senator representing the State of São Paulo, where Bush will be arriving. He was the sponsor of the “Citizen’s Basic Income” legislation that was signed into law in 2004. The law is grounded in the concept that an unconditional and guaranteed minimum income is the simplest and most effective step toward the eradication of poverty.More Information

Professor of anthropology at Brown University and the Watson Institute for International Studies, Lutz said today: “Officially, a quarter of a million U.S. troops are massed in 737 major bases in 130 countries in facilities worth $115 billion. …

“While the bases are literally weapons depots and staging areas for warmaking and ship repair facilities and golf courses and basketball ourts, they are also political claims, spoils of war, arms sales showrooms, toxic industrial sites, laboratories for cultural (mis)communication, and collections of customers for local bars, shops, and prostitution.” Lutz is editor of the forthcoming book, Bases, Empire and Global Response.More Information

JAMES PETRAS
Author of numerous books including Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Petras said today: “Bush’s visit to Latin American is an effort to recoup declining imperial influence by consolidating ties with both the rightist client regimes (Uribe in Colombia and Calderon in Mexico) and the pseudo ‘center-left’ neo-liberal regimes of Vazquez [in Uruguay] and Lula [in Brazil]. The purpose is to integrate these client regimes into the U.S. economic and diplomatic orbit and to construct an anti-Chavez coalition. Given that Bush has no popular support in Latin America, he will only meet with client rulers behind closed doors with heavy security protecting him. Parallel to Bush’s visit, President Chavez will visit Argentina where tens of thousands of people will attend a mass public meeting to welcome him.” Petras is professor emeritus at Binghamton University.More Information

MARK WEISBROT
An economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot writes frequently about economic and political developments in Latin America. His most recent article is “President Bush’s Trip to Latin America is All About Denial,” which states: “Latin America’s economic growth over the last 25 years has been a disaster — the worst long-term growth failure in more than a hundred years. From 1980-2000 GDP per person grew by only 9 percent, and another 4 percent for 2000-2005. Compare this to 82 percent for just the two decades from 1960-1980, and it is easy to see why candidates promising new economic policies have been elected (and some re-elected) in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. They also came close to winning in Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica.”More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The White House is on the defensive about global warming today in the wake of statements by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the official U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who said he now believes the world has “already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Pachauri’s statements — which included a call for immediate “very deep” cuts in pollution as necessary for humanity’s survival — are acutely embarrassing to the Bush administration because it strongly backed Pachauri for his current post.

The following analysts are available for interviews:

ROSS GELBSPAN
Gelbspan is author of the recent book Boiling Point, which includes a set of three policy strategies to propel a very rapid global energy transition. He said today: “Dr. Pachauri is echoing the findings of a growing number of climate scientists — many of whom say it may already be too late to avert very serious climate impacts…. At the same time, the U.S. has resisted any references to climate change at a global conference on disaster preparedness — and has cut funding for more than 100 climate research stations despite President Bush’s declaration that the issue needs more study. Given the urgent need for an immediate, worldwide transition to clean energy, the administration’s persistent denial of the climate crisis is morphing from an instance of national embarrassment into a global nightmare of indefinite duration.”More Information

KERT DAVIES
Davies, research director of Greenpeace U.S., said today: “The Bush administration global warming policy has smelled a lot like Exxon from the beginning. Now the United States is lagging far behind in the race to solve global warming. Worse still, the Bush administration is actively attempting to slow other nations down. Meanwhile the good news is that core senators, key states and local communities are moving ahead to fill the vacuum of federal leadership on climate solutions.”More InformationMore Information

MARIA LUISA MENDONCA
Mendonca is the director of the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights in Brazil and is an organizer of the World Social Forum, which begins Wednesday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, concurrent with the World Economic Forum, which features business leaders in Davos, Switzerland. She said today: “The World Social Forum will help present concrete ways of building peace and justice all over the world. We expect some 150,000 people to participate including representatives of some 5,000 organizations from 120 countries. People are particularly concerned about the authoritarian and violent actions of the U.S. government…. It is amazing that so many people in the U.S. seem to accept Bush’s talk of ‘freedom and democracy.’ His administration is made up of many of the same people who supported dictatorships throughout Latin America and supported wars that killed tens of thousands in Central America in the 1980s. The Bush administration has gone against international law in Iraq, creating the conditions of chaos there; their policies have created a great deal of suffering around the world.”More InformationMore Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

For several days beginning Jan. 31, two global summits — one in Manhattan, one in Porto Alegre, Brazil — will offer dramatically different visions for the future of the world economy.

The World Economic Forum in New York City:
According to its website (www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/Annual+Meeting+2002%5CAbout+the+Annual+Meeting), the WEF was established in 1971 as a “member-based institution comprised of the 1,000 most powerful corporations in the world.” Annual meetings — billed as “the world’s global business summit” to “shape the global agenda” — have taken place in the Alps in Davos, Switzerland, where they faced growing protests. This year, sessions have been relocated to New York City. Meetings will be held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in a “unique club atmosphere,” closed to the public and the media. However, there will be an “External Media Center.”

Labor, community, environmental, student and other groups are planning parallel events, teach-ins and protests in New York City during the WEF’s meetings. These groups oppose the WEF’s vision of corporate power over the world economy.

The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil:
Initiated a year ago, this event (www.worldsocialforum.org ) is “an open meeting space” created as an alternative to the WEF. It is designed for “reflection, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and planning of effective action among entities and movements of civil society that oppose neoliberalism and a world dominated by capital and any form of imperialism.” The World Social Forum is “engaged in building a planetary society centered on the human being.” Last year there were upwards of 10,000 participants from 120 countries. This year, WSF organizers are expecting tens of thousands of delegates. Planned marches are being embraced by Porto Alegre’s city government.

Contacts:

MARIA LUISA MENDONCA
Mendonca is a member of the WSF organizing committee in Brazil and director of the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights.